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South Punjab sees Taliban connection as stigma
Punjab militants, possibly in the hundreds, fled to Fata —AFP/File photo ‘Wrong address,’ cry out the people in south Punjab as they receive another journalist arriving to look for Taliban and terrorists in their midst.
The NWFP government is anxious because it believes that ‘fresh recruits’ for militant groups challenging its writ are coming mostly from the southern districts of Punjab — D.G. Khan, Bahawalpur, Bahawalnagar, Muzaffargarh, etc. The arrest on April 5 of two Seraiki-speaking men linked with the killing of 27 people in a suicide attack at the Johar Ali Imambargah in D.G. Khan, which took place exactly two months before, has led to the formation of convenient theories that the militant Taliban groups have already forged a strong alliance with outfits in the southern Punjab. Investigators believe that the local militants provide logistical support and, in certain cases, human resource, to the Taliban for carrying out their terror operations in Punjab.
The police claim that
both Qari Mohammad Ismaeel, who had masterminded the D.G. Khan
bombing, and Ghulam Mustafa Kaisrani, who had facilitated the
Pashtun bomber, belonged to SSP, now operating as Ahle
Sunnat-wul-Jamaat, and had close links with TTP in South Waziristan
has reinforced this belief.
Most militants involved in the terrorist acts in the recent months have been identified as being from southern Punjab. The alleged nexus between the Punjabi Taliban and Pashtun militant groups has also led to a convenient theory that the militants in the southern Punjab are regrouping to ‘take over’ some southern districts like D.G. Khan or Muzaffargarh just as they have done in Swat.
Authorities in Punjab dismiss fears of Talibanisation out of hand. They, nevertheless, acknowledge that the growing cooperation between the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan and Punjab’s outlawed militant sectarian groups is a reality. ‘It is not a feeling; terrorism is already here (in Punjab). But you cannot draw any parallel between the situation in Fata/Swat and Punjab,’ a senior police officer in Dera Ghazi Khan said. He didn’t want to the identified because he was speaking on a ‘sensitive’ issue.
Mushtaq Ahmed Sukhera, Regional Police Officer in Bahawalpur, dismisses this notion as rubbish. ‘No part of the province is ready to fall into the lap of the militants,’ he says as he scoffs at the western media reports that the militants of the banned groups could challenge and undermine the state’s writ in south Punjab anytime soon.
The Dera Ghazi Khan police officer said if the militants could not undermine the state’s authority in Dera Ismail Khan, where they are more active and strong, how could they do this in his or any other district in Punjab?
He said that activists of so-called jihadi organisations were criminals who were involved in kidnapping for ransom and robbery because ‘they don’t know any other trade’.
‘The cooperation between the Punjabi militants and the Taliban in tribal areas is nothing more than a criminal nexus. We always knew about this nexus. ‘All criminals and proclaimed offenders find shelter in the tribal areas. Now they are using the label of Taliban,’ he argues.
RPO Sukhera disagrees with the view that the operatives of the Lashkar-i-Jhangvi, Sipah-i-Sahaba Pakistan and Jaish-i-Mohammad are regrouping in southern districts of the province under the banner of ‘pooling their resources’.
‘We (security agencies) do not have any credible intelligence that proves that militants from southern parts of the province are regrouping,’ he insists.
He says the militants belonging to these organisations have lost the ‘centre of gravity, the leadership, to rally around and regroup’.
‘Their leadership is either dead or in jail. It simply is not possible for them to regroup under the present circumstances. Some of them are sitting in the tribal areas, though,’ Sukhera said.
The fears of militants consolidating their ranks in south Punjab don’t stem only from the recent evidence of their links with the TTP or their involvement in recent terrorist acts. The leadership and activists of the banned groups, particularly the LJ and JM, with a strong base in Punjab have a history of close relationship with the Afghan Taliban as well as militants in Fata.
The LJ, for example, is said to be more active in Dera Ismail Khan these days and SSP president Qari Hussain is said to be acting as a deputy of Baitullah Mehsud there. Likewise, other leading names like Saifullah Akhtar, Maulana Jabbar and Maulana Ilyas Kashmiri are sitting pretty in the tribal areas. Whenever they faced pressure in Punjab, they took shelter either in the tribal areas or in Afghanistan. Riaz Basra, a slain leader of the LJ, for example, was given shelter in Kabul by the then Taliban regime for years before he returned home to be killed in a police encounter.
Punjab militants, possibly in the hundreds, fled to Fata when the government of Gen Pervez Musharraf hunted down LJ and JM operatives after two attempts on his life. These militants are reported to have fought alongside a group of Pakhtun Taliban led by Maulvi Nazir to flush out Uzbek and Chechen fighters from Waziristan a few years ago. It is difficult to say how many Punjabi militants fled to the tribal areas, but Habibur Rehman Khan, additional chief secretary of Fata, says their presence there is significantly large.
‘I tend to agree with those who say that the TTP and Punjab’s militant outfits have developed strong collaboration.
There is significant presence of Punjabi militants in the tribal areas. Now they --- the TTP and Punjabi militants --- are part of the same front and have one mission. The links Punjabi militants had developed with the Taliban in the 1990s are paying now,’ Khan says.
He also points out the presence of militants like SSP’s Aslam Farooqi in Orakzai Agency, saying these people were involved in sectarian activities and acts of sabotage in the NWFP. He insists that the groups forming the Taliban are multi-centric and can operate from any place.
‘They can’t risk travelling between the tribal areas and Punjab every day. Even funds for their operations and activities are raised locally,’ he says.
Many in Punjab’s southern districts refuse to subscribe to Khan’s view. Sardar Javed Akhtar Lund, a Pakistan Muslim League-Q leader and a former member of the Punjab assembly from Shadan Lund, about 45kms north-west of Dera Ghazi Khan, says south Punjab has remained a nursery, a major centre of recruitment, for sectarian outfits and organisations fighting in Afghanistan for decades.
‘You can find Afghan war veterans in almost every village, even in Shadan Lund, but they don’t enjoy public support. They have not grown so big as to challenge the state’s writ,’ Lund says, rejecting reports that his village has been turned into a no-go area or that people have received threatening letters from the so-called Taliban.
The New York Times reported last month that barbers in Shadan Lund had received threatening letters from militants to stop shaving beards. Tailors were reported to have been asked to stop stitching clothes for women and CD shops were told to stop selling music and video disks. But this reporter found no such signs of so-called Talibanisation during a visit to the area this week.
‘There are no Taliban
here, nor have I received any threat from them,’ says Amir Bashir,
who works at a barber’s shop on the Dera Ghazi Khan-Taunsa road. ‘I
first heard of the Taliban threatening people like me and others on
an Urdu TV channel. That was news to me.’
Pamphlets were distributed in some areas of Muzaffargarh and Kot Addu, commanding women to ‘properly’ cover themselves before stepping out of their homes. Police and residents later dismissed the incident as a mischief by some person(s). ‘It was just a hoax call,’ says Mehr Javed, a Deputy Superintendent of Police in Muzaffargarh. ‘No barber was hurt and no woman was attacked. We conducted extensive inquiries, but did not find anything.’
In Dera Ghazi Khan, too, the authorities received letters between January and March, warning them to stop dhamal (a popular dance form) on the occasion of the Sakhi Sarwar mela, 45-day celebrations held to mark wheat harvest. ‘Everything went smoothly during the mela. People participated in the celebrations without any fear as they do every year. But we were a bit more vigilant and careful,’ a police officer from Dera Ghazi Khan says.
‘There is no such threat as social Talibanisation of Punjab,’ says Sukhera. ‘Talibanisation of society is not on the agenda of the LJ or SSP. There is a big difference between the cultures of Punjab and the NWFP.
‘In rural Punjab, for example, women work alongside their men. People wouldn’t tolerate any attempt to impose an obscurantist agenda. The militant organisations based in Punjab are well aware of this fact.’
A journalist in Taunsa underscores the political dimension, though. He warns that many will warmly welcome the onslaught of the Taliban unless ‘the people of south Punjab are given their economic and political rights’.
Just as militants from Punjab fled to Waziristan via Dera Ghazi Khan, there is no dearth of people who are worried about the influx of TTP activists into this part of the province as they feel the heat of the military operation in Swat and tribal areas. ‘We have a long border with the NWFP, which makes it easier for the militants to move between tribal areas and south Punjab. When the Taliban feel pressure in Swat or Fata, it will be logical for them to shift to south Punjab because of its proximity. It is safer for them than moving to Afghanistan where borders are being monitored and protected by the American troops,’ says Zubaidul Islam Khan Sherwani, the district secretary of the Pakistan People’s Party in Muzaffargarh and president of the district bar council.
Police reject reports of any unusual movement of militants across the Punjab-NWFP border and Rangers have been deployed along the Indus bed. Officially, the Rangers are there to check criminal activities like kidnapping for ransom, which is rampant along the border of the two provinces. Unofficially, says a police officer, they are deployed to prevent ‘export of terrorism into Punjab’.
Still, some in Muzaffargarh believe that a large number of militants fleeing Swat and other areas are heading into south Punjab via Dera Ghazi Khan to join those workers who had come here from the NWFP looking for work.
‘These people have no families here and no identification documents on them. Their stay in the district can endanger peace in the area,’ says Syed Gulzar Abbas Naqvi. He is a religious leader in Muzaffargarh, but this could have been said by anyone living anywhere. As they say, anywhere from Khyber to Karachi. DAWN:Tuesday, 26 May, 2009 |
